The volume provides readers with an extensive introduction, a new translation, and a full literary and philological updated commentary of Lucian's The Ship or The Whishes. In the introduction there's an explanation of the structure and the dating of the dialogue, of the author's poetics and the peculiar features of the work: the relationship with the literary traditions, the connection with contemporary reality, the psychological characterisation of characters, the stylistic and lexical features. The comment offers a systematic dissertation on linguistic, historical, artistic and sociocultural aspects of the text, in order to provide a complete undestanding of the work and of its author's personality.